Archive for the ‘Photos’ Category

Mom & I spent the day, Mother’s Day, at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway today watching some of the qualifications. The coolest part was seeing about 20 minutes of a Q&A session with Mario Andretti. It was a beautiful day to sit the stands and take in the sights and sounds. Mom enjoys seeing the cars and stars, but would not enjoy all the people on race day, so going during qualifications is a perfect time.

Comcast can’t manage to get me the Versus network (go figure, they own the network) that has the qualifications, so I may well go watch in person again next weekend. The tension on bubble day is always fun to watch on TV, maybe it’ll be good in person too?

Anyways, here is my gallery of a few pictures. A few good ones of Mario and a couple of Helio Castroneves from a distance.

I’ve managed to get my pictures from the 91st Running of the Indianapolis 500 uploaded to my gallery. Rather disappointing race due to it being cut off at 166 laps due to the 3 third rain shower of the day. I’m sure Dario Franchitti wasn’t disappointed though.

And here are the rest. There’s a couple movies in there as well. New Gallery software for me too. Or, at least an upgrade to Gallery2.

All the pictures were taken with my new Canon S3 IS. Pretty nice camera.

Here are some pictures of the ducklings that are behind mom’s house this year. The mama duck was one that I saw 2 years ago.. Or at least there was another female duckling 2 years ago with a small white stripe on the back of her neck. We also saw her last year. And this year she has 11 little ducklings to keep track of! Pretty neat to see her grow up like that 🙂

Mom & I went up to the Ducktail Run in Gas City, Indiana today.. There were over 1200 cars preregistered and they were expecting plenty more to show up. It was a really festive atmosphere and people were just hanging out having a good ole time.

I’m too lazy to link my favorite thumbnails, besides, there are too many favorites. So here’s the pictures. Enjoy!

Here are some pictures of Heidi’s, my Uncle’s miniature schnauzer, visit this year. He and my aunt went to Florida for a week or so and left her with my mom. I think one week a year is enough of a dog fix for mom… 🙂

I used a Craftsman 7″ random orbital buffer for the two polishes.. I think I need a Porter Cable machine and some good foam pads to get some better results. The Craftsman would be fine for applying wax or sealant, but the motor is too weak to do much else really. I used it for the polishes because it’s easier than doing it by hand 🙂

This machine is the one that I want. Seems to be quite popular amongst the enthusiast, and even professional, detailing community.

My cousin and I got to my Uncle’s camping area about 9am and hung around for a bit, hoping it wasn’t going to rain, but not wanting to sit in our seats for several hours during a rain delay. Then it started raining. My Uncle cooked us some breakfast in his little camper dealio on the back of his truck. Around noon we decided to head in to the track because we had heard that they’d be starting the race around 1.

Got there and our seats were amazing. Every other time I’ve been, probably 13 races, we’ve been just off of turn 4. This time we’re RIGHT by the start/finish line, the yard of bricks. We can see all the action in the pits, the cars coming off the fourth turn, all the way down the front straight, and in to the first turn. The seats were also under cover, so if it started raining, we’d stay dry.

Around lap 23 they brought out the caution flag, and then red flagged the race at lap 27 due to the rain. Bah. 2+ hr rain delay and things got going again. Couple wrecks and such, nothing too bad. Worst was a three car wreck that ended up with the cars sliding down pit road and a safety worker getting hurt. Lap 175 it starts to rain again with Buddy Rice in the lead. Race is called at lap 180, and he takes the yellow / checkered flag. Bah. It was around 6:30 at that time, and we really wanted to see the race go the distance. Oh well.

As we were leaving the track, it really started raining. Got to my Uncle’s camping spot and it started raining even harder! Instead of waiting for the rain to pass, my cousin and I decided to just go on to his Jeep. Got freakin soaked.. thunder, lightning, tornado sirens going off. Then it seemed like the storm just followed us all the way home, making for a miserable drive.

I owe mom a car detailing for mother’s day. She was never home much when she was in town, so now that she’s on vacation, I have all the time I need. Just got started with my little process today. I washed the car with Protect All Quick N Easy Wash and a microfiber wash mitt. Dried off using a 100% cotton terry cloth towel and waffle weave microfiber towel. Then I clayed the car using Clay Magic detailing clay. Here are a couple pictures I took, I’ll keep taking pictures as I go along, hopefully I’ll be able to see some difference. The car is tan, so stuff really doesn’t show up all that well. Total time to do those two steps was just over 2 hours.

Next on my list is Meguiar’s #83 DACP and #82 SFP, then S100 SEPC, Poorbooy’s EX-P, and S100 wax. I’m also going to clean the headlights by wetsanding and using Mother’s chrome polish, clean the wheels using S100 Wheel Cleaner, and dress the tires using Turtle Wax Emerald Series Tire Wax. Leather inside will be conditioned and cleaned with Lexol products, plastic will be dressed (not sure what I’ll use right now), carpet vacummed and shampooed if necessary. Lots of stuff to do!

The EX-P and some Meguiar’s Final Detail are actually in the mail right now.. Scheduled for delivery on Wednesday. So I’ll probably do the DACP, SFP, and SEPC on Monday, interior and wheels on Tuesday, then finish up on Wednesday. At least, that’s my plan for now. We’ll see how the weather holds up and such.

I went to Hartford City’s Civil War Days today. Pretty neat. There was about 500 reenactors encamped there – men, women, and kids. All in period dress, sleeping in period tents, cooking with cast iron cookware. I’ve never been to a Civil War reenactment before, so this was quite a treat.